Weedmaps, which calls itself “the most widely used medical and recreational marijuana dispensary locator in the industry,” is searching for a few good employees.
Weedmaps employs more than 400 and has 56 job openings on its website; 50 of those are at its Irvine headquarters, which occupies about half of a 45,000-square-foot building at Irvine Co.’s Discovery Park. It has 13 senior level positions available, including controller, head of design, and director of software engineering.
It already has a new chief executive. In March, Weedmaps promoted Chris Beals to the top position from president and general counsel.
“For more than a decade, Weedmaps’ mission has been to make commerce in the cannabis industry a positive experience for all stakeholders, including consumers, retailers, wholesalers, brands and distributors, by providing technology solutions that surface insights, inform decisions, drive action, manage business processes, and facilitate regulatory compliance,” Beals said in an emailed statement to the Business Journal. “We look forward to continuing to serve consumers and the cannabis industry as a whole.”
Co-founder and previous Chief Executive Doug Francis, who ran the company for the prior decade, became chairman of the board of directors. Francis focuses his time on legalization efforts, as well as advising and managing other cannabis brands around the world.
Besides Irvine, the company has offices in Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, Denver, New York, Phoenix, and Toronto.
The computer engineering department is seeking the largest number of new hires with 18 open positions. Of those, more than half require a programmer adept with Elixir or Ruby.
Growth
Beals, who has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, has plenty of experience providing legal and financial advice in the private equity world in New York City, where he lived until 2015 when he joined Weedmaps.
Beals declined to comment on the company’s annual sales and its expansion plans.
The growth of Weedmaps suggests exploding revenue. The private company had about $30 million in sales in 2013, CNBC said, citing co-founder Justin Hartfield.
It’s not only Irvine where the company is growing.
Weedmaps’ parent Ghost Management Group LLC in June signed a 115,000-square-foot office lease in Los Angeles’ Arts District. The lease is for the top three floors of the Row DTLA building; the Los Angeles Business Journal estimated the annual rent at more than $5 million.
The space is in a 1.3 million-square-foot complex. Other notable tenants include Shopify Inc., Sharp Electronics Corp., Zappos LLC, and Adidas. Row DTLA is owned by New York-based investment firm Atlas Capital Group.
In addition to Weedmaps, Ghost Management owns the retail brands Weed Cup, Marijuana Cup, Weedmaps Cup, and Weedmaps Grown. The company also owns the website, “Marijuana.com,” which links to Weedmaps.
Ghost Management, formerly known as Weedmaps Media Inc., is a venture capital firm primarily focused on building consumer, technology and enterprise businesses, according to the Daily Marijuana Observer website.
The company manages two funds, including Emerald Ocean, which invests in market-defining companies and technology in the medical marijuana sector, such as WeedMaps.com and Ghost Domain Capital, which invests in category disruptive internet domains that are mostly oriented toward B2B solutions. Neither the company nor the funds are registered with Securities and Exchange Commission’s website.
‘Stoner’s Paradise’
Hartfield and Francis began Weedmaps in 2008 as a way to help medicinal users find dispensaries and post reviews of products and stores. It quickly gained popularity, becoming one of the most downloaded apps in Google and Apple stores. The New York Daily News in 2009 called it “a new stoner’s paradise on the web.”
It became known as a “Yelp” of the marijuana industry by permitting its users to review the pot they bought and rank the businesses from one to five stars. Pot shops can provide menus of their products, complete with daily discounts.
Last December, it launched Weedmap News where users can find breaking news, political coverage, science explainers, and long-form journalism. A recent article was headlined: “Evidence of History’s Earliest Stoners Found in the Mountains of China.”
Last year, it listed 2,000 marijuana dispensaries and delivery services in Southern California alone, the magazine Wired reported. Dozens if not hundreds of such sites are in Orange County, from Huntington Beach to San Clemente.
It’s a business that continues to be steeped in controversy, even from fellow travelers.
After California legalized recreational cannabis use in 2016, Weedmaps continued to accept advertising from marijuana stores operating without a license. When the state government last year questioned Weedmaps, it claimed it’s not subject to state regulations, arguing it’s under the same rules that help prevent websites like Facebook and YouTube from liability for content posted by users, Wired magazine reported.
Weedmaps generates a revenue stream by providing its own form of verification. At many dispensary locations or delivery services, it offers brand-specific “Weedmaps verified” stickers to confirm high-end products are authentic.
Weedmaps said authenticity is important because counterfeits could use unsafe materials or be past expiration dates.
